TEDDY BEARS - BEARS STORIES, RHYMES, SONGS, etc.(excerpts
from posts)
(If you want to retell any of the stories listed below, be sure
to obtain permission from the copyright holder if the material
is not in the public domain)
1) TEDDY BEAR TEDDY BEAR
Teddy bear teddy bear turn around (turn around)
|touch the ground (bend and touch toes)
|show your shoe (point to shoe)
|that will do (bow)
|march upstairs (marching motions with feet)
|say your prayers (hands together in prayer)
|turn around (at the point before I say the last line I usually
say, "And very carefully..." I have had children fall
over each other or step on fingers so I have learned from my mistakes.
If I say "very carefully" they always comply.)
|sit back down

2) The story about How Bear Lost His Tail
too. A version can be found in Joseph Bruchac's Iroquois
Stories, Heroes and Heroines, Monsters and Magic, Crossing
Press, 1995. In that one bear's tail breaks off because it's frozen
- another I've heard has snapping turtle bites it off. LOVE the
idea of making this interactive by bringing different animals
in to ask Bear why he's on the ice. The same can be done with
Bear's Race With Turtle - having
different animals come down to cheer for Bear or Turtle as they
race around the pond. (Turtle uses his cousin's help.)

3) For a young audience, Sody Sallyratus
is a good choice, and lots of fun. The bear sort of dies though,
so....hmmm. You could possibly amend that ending. I tell it as
is and it's a great favorite. No one seems to mind the bear's
demise.

There is also the story of how the bear got his short tail. It
would be a nice one for that gig. And the story of how Chipmunk
got his stripes in one of Margaret Read MacDonald's books. The
bear plays a big role in that story.Comment: The version in Margaret
Read McDonald's book Twenty Tellable Tales
has the mother sew up the bear after he falls from the tree. The
kids love it!

Do you know the song Bear in Tennis Shoes?
If you don't mind singing, it's a fun audience participation song.
I have a bear puppet I used for that, even found a little pair
of tennis shoes at Goodwill to put on him! Haven't done that one
for a while, but it was very popular with audiences.

Our own Dianne de Las Casas has her own wonderful version of Why
the Bear Has A Stumpy Tale. I have used it with her kind
permission and the children love it!

5) What you need is a story for a 3 year old. I got this book
from being a storyteller for Candlewick Press the first year they
came out I guess. I sing the whole story and use a flannel board.
I start with a whole bear but the arms, legs, ear and head all
come apart but on the flannel board they go back together. I xeroxed
the rest of the pictures or hold up the picture in the book. Here's
the text. I found some of the other suggestions a little too sophisticated
for a 3 year old, but this one isn't. My
Old Teddy by Dom Mansell--My old Teddy's leg came off.
Poor old Teddy! I took him to the Teddy doctor. She made Teddy
better (bear back together)My old Teddy's arm came off. Poor old
Teddy. I took him to the Teddy doctor. She made Teddy better.My
old Teddy's ear came off. Poor old Teddy!I took him to the Teddy
doctor. She made Teddy better.Then poor old Teddy's head came
off.The Teddy doctor said, "Teddy had enough now."Teddy
has to rest(picture shows a band-aid on head, a bandage wrapped
around leg.)The Teddy doctor gave me a new Teddy. I love my new
Teddy very much (here's where I see you Teddy bear. The picture
shows the little girl swinging the new Teddy in the air by arms)but
I love poor old Teddy best. Dear old, poor old Teddy. The End
(She's hugging her bandaged bear and the old bear has an expression
of pure love and cuddling on it's face) . It's a sweet story for
a 3 year old. what do you think?I wish I had a scanner but I don't.I
drew a big yellow brown teddy and the arms and legs and head and
ears just lift off the flannel board.

6) And, of course, there's the song Teddy
Bear's Picnic. That lends itself to the end of the program.

7) I love this story about How Bear Lost
His Tail too. A version can be found in Bruchac's Iroquois
Tales In that one Bear's tail breaks off because it's frozen
- another I've heard has snapping turtle bites it off. LOVE the
idea of making this interactive by making by bringing different
animals in to ask Bear why he's on the ice. The same can be done
with Bear's Race With Turtle - having
different animals come down to cheer for Bear or Turtle as they
race around the pond. (Turtle uses his cousin's help. I did this
as play with first graders once.)Comment:The
Iroquois tale is in Joseph Bruchac's Iroquois
Stories, Heroes and Heroines, Monsters and Magic, Crossing
Press, 1995. I've heard or read another version where Bear can
NOT break out of the Ice and Turtle has to be called to "snap" off his tale.

8) Is it too late to add in another good interactive bear story?
One of my personal favorites is Why the
bear has a stumpy tail. I've used it as a puppet play and
as an interactive story with either myself or a larger child taking
the place of the bear sitting on the ice, fishing with his tail.
Other children can take the part of animals who come up and ask
bear why he is sitting on the frozen river in the middle of winter
and try to help him pull free of the ice, similiar to pulling
the turnip or other vegetable out of the field.

9) The bear story is from Asbjoernsen & Moe's wonderful collection,
inspired by and to many people's taste superior to the Grimm's.
This is a large group of stories, selections of which have been
published in many editions in many languages. Two readily available
paperbacks, which mostly don't repeat each other, are the Dover
book East of the Sun, West of the Moon,
attributed to the gifted translator George Dasent, and the Pantheon
book Norwegian Folktales. It's also
on line. According to Beate or Neppe, I'm not sure which, the
tellers in Norway rarely use these stories-- they've gotten trapped
in the archaic language, which sets off all kinds of unproductive
reactions in listeners. Grimm in Germany, too, I think, has a
kind of calcified "this is how we do it, just like this!"--
some mix of King James and Mark Twain kitsch. We, fortunately,
do not have these issues, it's all translations to us.

10) THE
THREE BEARS IN 2003:
THIS SHOULD END ALL 3 BEARS STORIES
Baby Bear goes downstairs and sits in his small chair at the table,
he looks into his small bowl. It is empty. "Who's been eating
my porridge?!!", he squeaks. Papa Bear arrives at the big
table and sits in his big chair. He looks into his big bowl, and
it is also empty. "Who's been eating my Porridge?!!,"
he roars. Momma Bear puts her head through the serving hatch from
the kitchen and yells, "Good lord, how many times do we have
to go through this with you idiots? It was Momma Bear who got
up first, it was Momma Bear who woke everyone in the house, it
was Momma Bear who made the coffee, it was Momma Bear who unloaded
the dishwasher from last night, and put everything away. It was
Momma Bear who went out in the cold early morning air to fetch
the newspaper, it was Momma Bear who set the damn table, it was
Momma Bear who put the friggin cat out, cleaned the litter box,
and filled the cat's water and food dish, and, now that you've
decided to drag your sorry bear-butts downstairs, and grace Momma
Bear's kitchen with your grumpy presence, listen good, cause I'm
only going to say this one more time. "I HAVEN'T MADE THE
#*%$ PORRIDGE YET !!

11) For Teddy Bear lovers--adults and kids of all ages.
Inspector Blue Bearolli and homicide detectives, Billye Bare and
Bernard Bearstein of the Grunion Beach Police Department solve
a baffling series of mysteries. Their exploits appear (free) in
daily episodes on their Web Page.http://www.teddybearmysteries.com